London, the distant future.Still recovering from the Skinners' Riots 14 years ago, peace and order have been restored - mostly. The oppressive, not-quite-human ruling class of Scriven, including their overlord, Auric Godshawk, were all either killed or driven out by mobs of Londoners calling themselves Skinners. The New Council, with the help of the Order of Engineers, have attempted to create a new London, but the streets are still full of angry folk unhappy with their lot. Making things worse is the approach of the Movement, nomads from the North who are rumored to want to take over London now that the Scriven are gone.
The summer of the Skinners' Riots, Dr. Crumb, one of the city's Engineers, discovered a baby with two different-colored eyes and a mysterious wound on the back of her neck abandoned in a basket with only a note reading 'Her name is Fever.' With the orphanage destroyed by the riots, Dr. Crumb decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to take the baby in and raise her. After all, the rioting mobs, afraid of the possible inhumanness of her strange eyes, probably would have killed her.
Fever is now the youngest and only female Engineer in London. The Engineers are the only people who still have the knowledge to use the technology of the Ancients, although they no longer know how to create new machines. When archaeologist Kit Solent requests an Engineer to help him with a new discovery of Ancient technology, the Society decides to send Fever on her first assignment.
When Kit shows Fever a secret tunnel running under London to Auric Godshawk's ruined summer castle outside the city, she is at first only intrigued. But as they make their way through the tunnel and into an underground room that leads to a locked vault, Fever is hit with an incredible sense of deja vu. She knows she's never been in the tunnel, or to Auric Godshawk's castle before. So why is she having flashbacks that feel like memories? Why does she know the combination to the vault? And what does Kit Solent know that he's not telling her? Who is Fever Crumb?
This futuristic, dystopian novel is a whole lot of steampunk and a little bit of sci fi, and every piece of it is an awesome thrill ride. Follow Fever through the dangerous streets of a future London where people tile their entryways with old computer keys, Harry Potter is an Ancient prophet, and blogger is a swear word as she races against the clock to uncover the dark secrets in her past.
Megan
(now reading Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George, the companion novel to Princess of the Midnight Ball)
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